Why Google Canceled Project Ara

It was uncovered this week by Reuters that Google has discontinued Project Ara, its effort to build a modular smartphone. Ara captured many tech watchers’ imaginations with slick prototypes and the possibility of upgrading individual phone components, or swapping out phone components for particular applications. Though Google hasn’t commented, there are some hints about just what led to the decision.

The cancellation is a somewhat surprising reversal, given that it was announced just three months ago that Ara developer kits would ship in late 2016, and a commercial product would arrive in 2017. According to Reuters’ sources, the cancellation is part of a broader streamlining of the company’s hardware production.

But there were also challenges and shortfalls specific to Ara. Its initial rollout, planned for last year in Puerto Rico, was delayed. Following that stall, some planned features that turned out to be too challenging to execute were stripped from the project. Ara also lost its director last year.

Ara may ultimately have been a victim of insurmountable flaws with its underlying concept. As detailed by Recode, separating a phone into components threatened to slow communication between them, while also sapping battery life and making phones more expensive.

Ara’s cancellation highlights questions about the future of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, which was developing the phone. Regina Dugan, who created ATAP at Motorola before it was folded into Google, left for Facebook just a few weeks before the May announcement of Ara’s now-scuttled rollout.

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ATAP under Dugan could have been described as something between a conventional product development unit and Alphabet’s “Moonshot Factory,” X. X is behind ambitious research projects like self-driving cars and Loon wi-fi balloons. As described by the New York Times, X is facing some pressure to produce marketable products, not just science experiments, and Ara may have been the victim of similar pressure.

In fact, the Ara shutdown is in many ways reminiscent of one particular X project—Google Glass. Glass, pitched as a rethinking of mobile computing from the ground up, had a limited commercial release in 2013. But it went into hibernation less than two splashy and controversial years later, essentially a very thought-provoking failure.

By pulling Ara, Google may have avoided something similar – an apparent turn to the cautious for a company that has rarely shown fear.

Google’s Project Ara Modular Phone Launches Next Year

After a year of near-total invisibility, Google’s Project Ara came roaring back yesterday, with the announcement at Google I/O that the modular phone would be in consumers’ hands next year. Ara developer kits will ship later this year, so third-party developers can start building modules.

The Ara project was once dismissed as a pipe dream, but recent changes to both the team and the approach helped push it to the starting line. One of the largest changes, as described by Wired, was axing upgradeable processors and RAM. Instead, the phone’s core architecture will be static, with the flexibility to change or upgrade secondary features like cameras, batteries, and extra screens.

Ara’s open development means it’s a space for innovation. The short list of third-party proposals shared with Wired included projectors, flashlights, microphones, and even low-tech options like pill boxes. Niche features like that would be very hard to justify integrating into any all-in-one phone, but Ara will let developers experiment on a smaller scale.

Ara’s arrival is extremely timely. Smartphone growth has slowed as market saturation approaches. Not only are there fewer new customers, the upgrade cycle appears to be slowing. Among other things, that has made Apple APPL suddenly look a good bit more fragile.

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Project Ara could be the right solution for that new environment, by allowing both incremental upgrades and greater personalization. With enough of the right partners on board (and assuming the technology really, really works), Ara’s appeal could squeeze a bit more life out of a waning cycle. Google GOOG seems to think so—this is the first smartphone they’ll be manufacturing themselves, suggesting they’re more willing to put skin in the game on Ara than they have been on more conventional smartphones.

Prices for either the developer kit and consumer phone are not yet public, but Google tells Wired that Ara will start life as a “high-end device.” Developer kits will ship this fall.

Is modular technology the next ‘it’ trend?

Ahead of the IFA consumer electronics confab in Berlin, Acer recently announced a new “modular” PC, called the Revo Build Series. The PC lets consumers build their own desktop computer LEGO-style.

Consumers can build their own computer by stacking pre-made “blocks” one on top of another. In a matter of seconds, consumers can swap out a hard drive for a storage block by simply placing it on top of the computer’s core block, which includes 8GB of RAM, SD card slot, DisplayPort and Ethernet.

For example, users can add features like speakers and microphones to their computer by stacking an audio block on top of the computer’s base, while another separate block would allow wireless charging. The blocks would continued to be stacked vertically and, in the end, appear just like a toy Lego tower.

The Acer Revo Build Series is part of a growing trend of “modular” products that offer gadget owners the ability to quickly upgrade their machines without having to buy new expensive devices.

Modularity is commonplace in manufacturing where standard components are used to build vehicles and PCs, among other products. However, modularity has never been offered to consumers on such a major scale. Historically, in order to upgrade a computer, tech experts would need to break open a PC and swap out its parts with compatible supplies, which could take hours.

The complexity of the job and the potential pitfalls left many determining that the risk was too high. Instead, a culture of throwing out old machines and buying new, upgraded alternatives has become the norm. Indeed, the upgrade lifecycle has proven to be the lifeblood of the technology industry, allowing companies to sell new products on a regular basis.

Despite that, the modularity trend continues to march forward and tech giant Google GOOGL is leading the charge.

When Google sold Motorola to Lenovo in 2014 for $2.9 billion, the company negotiated a deal to keep a technology called Project Ara within its ranks.

Project Ara, which was first unveiled by Motorola in 2013, hopes to create a modular smartphone that allows users to quickly swap out components, like a camera, with ease. Consumers would buy a Project Ara device and pick and choose the components they want included in their phone. They can then also buy new components to replace old ones at a later date and time. All the while keeping the same device and using a standardized input that would allow any company—not just Google—to design components that plug into the smartphone.

“Project Ara seeks to create an open, modular, mobile hardware ecosystem much like the software ecosystem,” Rafa Camargo, systems engineering lead for Project Ara, told Fortune. “Such an advance would allow developers to bring their technological developments to market faster. Together, the platform and partners would create new choices and possibilities for users worldwide.”

Such an ecosystem could dramatically change the industry. Today, many companies spend a lot of time building entire products, but if a new, modular ecosystem develops, many firms could instead focus on building smaller, less expensive components that could be plugged into a device. Their costs would be lower and consumers would pick the features they want most from the companies of their choosing.

Phonebloks is another company that is hoping to see the industry embrace modular products. The organization says its goal is to ultimately reduce electronic waste and foster an environment in the technology industry that allows for more user control over devices.

“Modular has the potential to give the opportunity of choice to the people and enables for longer product life cycles, thereby reducing (electronic) waste,” Gawin Dapper, chief technology officer at Phonebloks, told Fortune. “When executed well, it also lets users choose their personal configuration and when using open standards, it also makes innovation more approachable.”

Modularity could also open a new world for children. One Education, a small social enterprise is building a modular computer called Infinity that makes it easy for children to turn a touch screen tablet into a notebook, as well as add camera functionality (and other core components). The organization says it has also initiated a program to help children access technology both in developed countries and emerging markets.

“Our mission is not to bolster returns to shareholders, we have none. Our mission is to prevent the digital divide before it forms,” the organization says on its website, referring to inequality in access to technology between countries. “That’s why we created a computer that is universal. Every Infinity and module sale contributes to the distribution of Infinity computers to schools and communities around the world who would otherwise go without.”

Still, modularity success isn’t guaranteed and neither Project Ara nor the Acer Revo Build Series has launched just yet. Both companies are also competing against a technology industry that has long clung to the idea of companies deciding a product’s components, leaving consumers with little control.

However that doesn’t mean Google and the others aren’t trying. Indeed, Google is aiming high with modularity.

“The smartphone is one of the most empowering and intimate objects in our lives. Yet most of us have little say in how the device is made, what it does, and how it looks, and 5 billion of us don’t have one,” Google says on its Project Ara website. “What if you could make thoughtful choices about exactly what your phone does, and use it as a creative canvas to tell your own story? Introducing Project Ara. Designed exclusively for 6 billion people.”

This whacky Google project is a decidedly non-Alphabet moonshot

There’s curious news out of Google this week, albeit of the fringe variety. Via a tweet, the company says it no longer plans to test its “Project Ara” modular smartphone in Puerto Rico this year. Instead, as Cnet neatly summarizes, Google aims to try out the product somewhere in the U.S. in 2016.

This leads to two obvious questions: What’s a modular phone and why would GoogleGOOG have considered testing it in Puerto Rico in the first place?

The first answer is pretty cool, actually. Google wants to seed the smartphone market with a product that lets consumers pick and choose the components they like, much the way they currently configure phones with software applications of their choosing. As Google notes in an online FAQ: “With a modular platform, you can pick the camera you want for your phone rather than picking your phone for the camera. You could have a sensor to test if water is clean. You could have a battery that lasts for days. A really awesome speaker. A gamer phone. Or it could even be your car key. The possibilities are limitless.” As for Puerto Rico, it seems Google liked the idea of an FCC-regulated area where inexpensive phones still dominate the market, among other attributes.

Production problems are the culprit for the delay. But a setback for a pie-in-the-sky project isn’t all that important. What matters is that Google continues to try whacky ideas. What’s more, though Project Ara certainly is a stretch, it resides within what will be Google Inc., not the new Alphabet, home to Google X and other out-there experiments. The company’s Advanced Technology and Projects Group—which Miguel Helft profiled when he was at Fortune—runs Project Ara, and a modular phone theoretically fits nicely with Android, the mobile software that’s core to Google’s search business. ATAP is staying with Google, whose engineers still work on creative “20% projects,” like the solar-panel information site Katie Fehrenbacher covered Monday. In other words, the advertising company is maintaining its spirit of experimentation as well as a “moonshot factory” of its very own.

This post originally appeared in Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily tech-business newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

Google’s game-changing smartphone project has hit a snag

Those in the know say that modular smart phones are the future. It just turns out the future is going to be a little later than we thought.

Google’s GOOG modular smart phone, being developed under the name Project Ara, was supposed to launched as a pilot project in Puerto Rico this year. But in a series of tweets, the folks at Project Ara has indicated that those plans might have changed.

The delay comes just as Google is undertaking a huge organizational change, placing its divisions under a holding company called “Alphabet.”

Tech enthusiasts are excited about the arrival of a modular smartphone, which, would allow users to switch out hardware components like cameras, batteries, sensors and memory. The team promised to give more updates on Project Ara’s future next week.